99 Fun Facts About Food Trivia for Kids

Which of these is the main ingredient in ketchup?

Tomato ketchup is made from tomatoes mixed with sugar and vinegar, plus seasonings and spices.

Which insects make honey?

Honey is made by several species of bees, and the best known of them are honey bees.

Pizza is a dish that comes from which country?

Pizza is an Italian dish: a flat base of wheat dough topped with tomato and cheese, then baked at a very high temperature.

Chocolate is made from the roasted beans of which plant?

Cocoa beans are the seeds of the cacao tree. They are roasted and ground up to make chocolate.

Which fruit is the main ingredient in guacamole?

Guacamole is an avocado-based dip that was first made in Mexico. Lime juice is often stirred in, but the avocado is the main part.

Sushi is a traditional dish from which country?

Sushi is a traditional Japanese dish built around rice seasoned with vinegar, sugar and salt, combined with fish, vegetables or other ingredients.

Cheese is made from which of these?

Cheese is a dairy product made by curdling the milk protein casein, which makes the milk thicken into solid curds.

Tree sap is boiled down to make which sweet topping for pancakes?

Maple syrup is made by boiling the watery sap of maple trees until it turns thick and sweet. Canada makes more than three quarters of the world's supply.

Which vegetable is used to make French fries?

French fries are strips of potato that have been deep fried until they are crisp on the outside.

A raisin is which fruit after it has been dried?

A raisin is simply a dried grape. A dried plum, by the way, is a prune.

Vanilla comes from which kind of flower?

Vanilla is a spice taken from the seed pods of orchids in the genus Vanilla, which grow in Mexico and Central America.

Tacos are a traditional food from which country?

A taco is a traditional Mexican dish made with a small hand-sized tortilla of corn or wheat, folded around a filling.

Where does a pineapple grow?

The pineapple is a small shrubby plant that only reaches about three to five feet tall, and a single fruit grows from the middle of its spiky leaves.

Hummus is a dip made mainly from which food?

Hummus is made from cooked, mashed chickpeas blended with tahini, lemon juice and garlic.

Which grain has kernels that burst into a fluffy white snack when heated?

Popcorn is a special variety of corn kernel. Heat turns the moisture inside each kernel to steam until it pops open.

Peanuts are unusual because their pods ripen in what place?

Underground: the flower stalk bends down and pushes the young pod into the soil, a trick botanists call geocarpy, which is why peanuts are dug up rather than picked.

Botanically speaking, a banana counts as which kind of fruit?

Botanically a banana is a berry: a fleshy fruit that develops from a single flower's ovary with the seeds inside the pulp. The banana plant itself is a giant herb, not a tree.

Each tiny speck on the outside of a strawberry is really a small fruit with a seed inside, called what?

An achene is each of the roughly 200 'seeds' on a strawberry, each a tiny fruit holding one seed, which is why a strawberry is not a true berry at all.

Machine-spun cotton candy was invented in 1897 by John C. Wharton and a partner who worked in which job?

William Morrison was a dentist; with confectioner John C. Wharton he patented an electric machine that spun sugar into fluff. At the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair they sold 68,655 boxes.

Spun sugar was sold to crowds at the 1904 World's Fair under what sweet-sounding name?

Fairy Floss was the name used at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, where 68,655 boxes sold at 25 cents each. Australians kept the name for cotton candy.

Which English nobleman gave his name to a filling served between two slices of bread?

The Earl of Sandwich: John Montagu, the 4th Earl, held the title in the 1700s and reputedly ate meat between bread so he could stay at the card table. The title comes from Sandwich in Kent.

What makes the famous holes in a wheel of Swiss cheese?

Gas made by bacteria: Propionibacterium feed on lactic acid in the cheese and release carbon dioxide, which collects as bubbles that become the eyes. Tiny specks of hay dust in the milk give the bubbles a place to start.

How much of a watermelon's flesh is simply water?

About 91% of watermelon flesh is water and only about 6% is sugar, which is why a slice cools you down more than it fills you up. The plant is a cousin of the cucumber and the pumpkin.

Butter is made by churning which dairy ingredient until the fat clumps together?

Cream is churned until the membranes around its fat globules break and the fat clumps together into butter. The watery liquid left behind is buttermilk.

The Italian word 'spaghetti' means what?

It is a plural little-version of 'spago', the Italian word for string. Italian pasta names are usually pictures like this: 'farfalle' means butterflies.

Carrots are packed with beta-carotene, which an enzyme in the small intestine converts into which vitamin?

Vitamin A is what beta-carotene becomes, and it helps your eyes work in dim light, which is where the old carrot-and-night-vision story comes from.

The first carrots farmed in Persia about 1,000 years ago were usually which colours?

Purple or yellow were the colours of the original Eastern carrot domesticated in Persia around the 10th century; orange carrots came much later, bred by Dutch growers in the 1600s.

Yeast makes bread dough rise by turning the sugars in the dough into bubbles of which gas?

Carbon dioxide from the yeast feeding on sugars gets trapped by stretchy gluten, and the same gas puts the fizz in a soda.

A dill pickle starts life as which vegetable before it is soaked in brine or vinegar?

A cucumber soaked in brine or vinegar becomes a pickle; small pickled cucumbers are called gherkins in Britain. Left in salty water long enough, they sour on their own through natural fermentation.

Which bird lays the biggest eggs of any land animal alive today?

The ostrich is also the heaviest and tallest bird on Earth and cannot fly at all; one of its eggs weighs about as much as two dozen chicken eggs.

Before pumpkins, Halloween lanterns in Ireland and Britain were carved from which vegetable?

The legend of Stingy Jack has him wandering the Earth with a glowing coal inside a hollowed-out turnip.

Marzipan, the sweet paste used to make little candy fruits, is made mostly from sugar and which nut?

Almonds ground with sugar make marzipan; Lübeck in Germany is famous for it. In Goa, India, bakers swap in cashews, and Geneva smashes a chocolate cauldron full of marzipan vegetables every December.

Rice, the food eaten by billions of people every day, is actually the seed of what kind of plant?

Wheat, corn and oats are grasses too, which makes grass the most important plant family on any dinner table.

Farmers flood their cranberry bogs at harvest time because ripe cranberries do what in the water?

Float is what harvested cranberries do, so they are corralled into a corner of the flooded bed and pumped out, which is why harvest photos look like red lakes.

The first modern chewing gum was made from chicle, a gum that comes from what?

Chicle is the milky latex of the sapodilla tree of Central America. Mexican general Santa Anna brought it to New York hoping it could replace rubber; it failed at that but became Adams New York Chewing Gum in 1871.

Which vegetable does the cartoon sailor Popeye eat to become super strong?

Spinach: Popeye squeezes open a can and swallows it whenever he needs strength. The comic strip began in 1929, and the 1930s Fleischer cartoons made the can-squeezing routine famous.

Tofu is made by pressing the curds of milk made from which bean?

Soybeans are soaked, ground and boiled into soy milk, which is curdled and pressed into tofu. Benjamin Franklin came across it in London in 1770 and described it in a letter as a kind of cheese from China.

Cheddar cheese is named after a village in which country?

England: Cheddar is a village in Somerset, and caves in nearby Cheddar Gorge kept a steady cool temperature, perfect for ageing the cheese.

The spice cinnamon comes from which part of a tree?

The bark curls into tubes as it dries, which is why cinnamon sticks look like little scrolls.

A mushroom is not a vegetable, so what kind of living thing is it?

A fungus: the mushroom you eat is just the fruiting body, while most of the organism is a web of threads called mycelium hidden in the soil or wood it grows on.

After plain water, which drink is the most widely consumed in the world?

Tea is made from the leaves of one evergreen shrub, Camellia sinensis, which first grew in the borderlands of China, India and Myanmar.

Which people were drinking chocolate as a key part of their culture by 1400?

The Aztecs drank bitter, spiced cacao and used the beans as money; the Maya were drinking it centuries earlier still. Europeans only got chocolate after Spaniards brought it back from Mexico.

Root beer gets its traditional flavour from the root bark of which tree?

Sassafras root bark gave root beer its original flavour. Its oil, safrole, was banned in US food in 1960, so most root beers use an artificial or safrole-free version. Add vanilla ice cream for a root beer float.

Bubble tea, with its chewy tapioca pearls, was invented in the 1980s in which place?

Taiwan: tea shops in Taichung and Tainan both claim to have invented it in the 1980s. It is also called boba or pearl milk tea; other toppings include grass jelly and red bean.

Coca-Cola was invented in the 1880s in Atlanta by John Pemberton, who worked as what?

John Pemberton was a pharmacist in Atlanta who first sold Coca-Cola in 1886 at the soda fountain of Jacobs' Pharmacy, marketing it as a tonic for headaches and tiredness.

Dr Pepper was created in the 1880s in which Texas city?

Waco: pharmacist Charles Alderton mixed the drink at Morrison's Old Corner Drug Store there in 1885, a year before Coca-Cola. The Dr Pepper Museum is in Waco.

Kool-Aid powder was invented in 1927 by Edwin Perkins in his mother's kitchen in which US state?

Nebraska: Edwin Perkins turned his liquid Fruit Smack into a powder in Hastings, Nebraska, so it would be cheaper to ship. Hastings later made Kool-Aid Days its town festival.

Lassi, a smoothie-like drink from Punjab in India, is made mainly from what?

Yogurt is the base of lassi, blended with water and spices such as cardamom or cumin, or with sugar and fruit for a sweet version, and traditionally served in a clay cup called a kulhar.

Slurpee frozen drinks are sold by which chain of stores?

7-Eleven licensed slush machines from the Icee company in 1965 and sold the drink under its own Slurpee name, chosen for the sound it makes through a straw.

Capri-Sun juice pouches were invented in 1969 in which country?

Germany: Rudolf Wild's company launched the drink as Capri-Sonne in West Germany in 1969, and its stand-up foil pouch with a straw went on to sell billions a year worldwide.

Coconut water is the clear liquid found inside which kind of coconut?

Young green coconuts hold the clear liquid; as the fruit ripens, that water turns into the white flesh.

Despite its name, ginger ale is not really which of these?

A type of ale: ginger ale is a non-alcoholic soda, not a brewed beer. The golden style came from Belfast in the 1850s and the dry style from Canadian John McLaughlin, whose Canada Dry launched in 1904.

Milkshakes became really popular in America after which kitchen gadget was invented?

The electric blender: Stephen Poplawski invented a drink-mixing blender in 1922, and soda fountains could then whip milkshakes smooth and frothy. Ice cream shops became hang-outs for young people in the 1930s and 1940s.

About what share of all the milk in the world comes from cows?

About 85% of the world's milk comes from cows, with water buffalo supplying most of the rest and goats, sheep and camels a small share. Every kind of mammal makes milk for its babies.

A popular story says the first pretzel was shaped by a monk to look like what?

Two hands praying: the legend says an Italian monk around 610 AD twisted dough to look like arms crossed in prayer and handed them to his students as 'pretiola', little rewards, for learning their lessons.

Because of their egg-like shape, jelly beans became linked in the US with which holiday?

Easter: their egg shape tied jelly beans to Easter baskets by the 1930s. President Ronald Reagan kept jars of them on his desk, and Jelly Belly created its blueberry flavour for his 1981 inauguration.

At the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, a vendor made a famous ice cream holder by curling up what?

A waffle cookie: Ernest Hamwi was selling zalabia, a thin Syrian waffle, when a neighbouring ice cream seller ran out of paper cups; he rolled a waffle into a cone and later started his own cone company.

Fortune cookies were probably first served in the US at a tea garden in which city?

San Francisco: Makoto Hagiwara, who ran the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, served them in the early 1900s. Until about World War II they were called 'fortune tea cakes', a clue to their Japanese roots.

About how many fortune cookies are made around the world every year?

About 3 billion a year, almost all of them in the United States. The biggest maker, Wonton Food in Brooklyn, bakes around 4.5 million of them every day.

Which ancient peoples were grinding roasted peanuts into a paste long before modern peanut butter?

The Aztecs and Incas roasted and ground peanuts into a paste centuries before Europeans arrived. George Washington Carver is often wrongly credited with inventing peanut butter; his 1916 peanut booklet came long after it existed.

The nut we eat hangs off the bottom of a juicy, pear-shaped 'apple' on which tree?

The juicy red or yellow cashew apple is a false fruit; the kidney-shaped nut hangs off its end. The apple is turned into juice and jam in Brazil and India.

Frank Epperson said he made the first ice pop by accident in 1905, at what age?

He was 11: he left a glass of soda-powder drink with a stirring stick outside on a cold night in Oakland and found it frozen in the morning. He patented the Popsicle in 1924.

When Cheerios cereal launched in 1941, it was sold under what name?

Cheerioats was the 1941 name; rival Quaker Oats complained that 'oats' was its trademark, so General Mills shortened it to Cheerios in 1945.

Ruth Wakefield invented the chocolate chip cookie in the 1930s at her inn in which state?

Massachusetts: her Toll House Inn in Whitman gave the cookie its other name. Her recipe was first printed in the 1938 edition of her Toll House cookbook.

Legend says pizza Margherita's red, white and green toppings were chosen to match what?

The story goes that a Naples pizza maker served it to Queen Margherita in 1889, with tomato, mozzarella and basil standing in for the flag's three stripes.

Haribo's first gummy bear, made in 1922, was inspired by what?

Hans Riegel's original 'Dancing Bear' was much bigger than today's Gold-Bear, and two of them cost a single pfennig.

The candy name PEZ is short for the German word for which flavour?

Peppermint: PEZ takes its letters from Pfefferminz, the German word for peppermint. It started in 1927 as a breath mint for adults in Vienna; character heads on dispensers arrived in 1955 to win over kids.

In 1958, Momofuku Ando of Nissin Foods launched which brand-new kind of food?

Instant noodles: the first brand was Chikin Ramen, pre-cooked and dried so it was ready in minutes with hot water. Nissin followed up with Cup Noodles in 1971.

Before 1959, the fuzzy brown kiwifruit was usually sold under what name?

Chinese gooseberry was the old name; New Zealand exporter Turners & Growers renamed it kiwifruit in 1959 after the kiwi bird, since anything labelled 'Chinese' sold badly in Cold War America.

Why is the durian fruit banned on public transport in Singapore?

Fans say it smells sweet; others say it is unbearable. The odour can linger for days, so some hotels ban it too.

Pink, spiky dragon fruit grows on what kind of plant?

The climbing cactus comes from Central America and can scramble 8 to 10 metres up nearby trees.

Which fruit, which can weigh 55 kg, is the biggest that grows on a tree?

Jackfruit, native to India, is the largest tree-borne fruit; one tree can produce up to 200 fruits a year, and each fruit is really hundreds of tiny flowers fused together.

Which part of the bean is left out of white chocolate?

The cocoa solids, the dark part of the bean, are left out; white chocolate uses only the pale cocoa butter plus sugar and milk, which is why some people argue it isn't really chocolate at all.

Daniel Peter invented the milk chocolate bar in 1875 in which country?

Switzerland: in Vevey, Daniel Peter mixed cocoa with condensed milk made by his neighbour Henri Nestlé. The first eating bar, Gala Peter, went on sale in 1887.

Goldfish crackers were invented in 1958 by a Swiss baker to celebrate his wife's what?

She was a Pisces, the sign of the fish. Pepperidge Farm brought the crackers to America in 1962 after its founder tried them on holiday.

The prized mozzarella of Italy's Campania region is traditionally made from which animal's milk?

Water buffalo milk, richer in fat than cow's milk, makes mozzarella di bufala, and the Campania version carries protected DOP status. The cow's-milk version is called fior di latte.

Ready-sliced bread first went on sale in 1928 in Chillicothe, a town in which US state?

Missouri: the Chillicothe Baking Company sold the first loaves sliced by Otto Rohwedder's machine on 7 July 1928. By 1933 about 80% of US bread was pre-sliced, giving us 'the greatest thing since sliced bread'.

Which dessert is named after a Russian ballerina?

Pavlova, a crisp meringue shell with a soft centre topped with cream and fruit, honours ballerina Anna Pavlova, who toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926; both countries claim to have invented it.

Saffron, the world's priciest spice, is picked from which flower?

The crocus: saffron is the three red stigmas of Crocus sativus, picked by hand each autumn, so it takes roughly 150,000 flowers to make one kilogram.

The Scoville scale rates chili peppers by how much they what?

Burn your mouth: pharmacist Wilbur Scoville devised the heat test in 1912. Sweet bell peppers score close to zero, a jalapeño a few thousand, and Pepper X measured about 2.69 million units in 2023.

Brussels sprouts take their name from the capital city of which country?

Belgium: Brussels is its capital, and the sprouts were grown near the city as early as the 13th century. They are said to taste sweetest after a frost.

Goulash, a meat stew first cooked by cattle herders, comes from which country?

Hungary: goulash (gulyás) began as a stew cooked in a kettle by Hungarian cattle herders, and its red colour comes from paprika, the country's signature spice.

The first nachos, in 1943, were tortilla chips with cheese and which pickled pepper?

Jalapeño: Ignacio 'Nacho' Anaya threw together fried tortilla pieces, melted cheese and sliced pickled jalapeños for hungry customers at the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, Mexico, when the cook couldn't be found.

Which nut gives Nutella spread its flavour, along with cocoa?

Each jar holds about 50 hazelnuts, and the Ferrero company buys about a quarter of the world's supply.

Potato chips were long called 'Saratoga Chips' after a spa town in which US state?

New York: Saratoga Springs was a fashionable spa town. A famous tale says cook George Crum invented them there in 1853 to annoy a fussy customer, but historians have shown the story is a myth.

Baskin-Robbins promised 31 ice cream flavours so you could try a new one every what?

Day of the month: 31 flavours meant a different one for every day. The slogan came from the Carson-Roberts ad agency in 1953, and the chain went on to create well over a thousand flavours.

Ben & Jerry's opened its first ice cream parlour in 1978 inside a renovated what?

Gas station: Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield opened in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont, having learned ice cream making from a $5 correspondence course; they first planned to open a bagel shop.

What is the name of the little paper strip poking out of a Hershey's Kiss wrapper?

A plume: the paper strips were added in 1921, when machines took over wrapping the chocolates that had been folded in foil by hand since 1907, as a sign of a genuine Hershey's Kiss.

Oreo cookies were launched in 1912 as a copy of which older sandwich cookie?

Hydrox came out four years earlier, but Oreo became so popular that many people now assume Hydrox is the copy.

The Spanish word 'tortilla' translates roughly as what?

Little cake: tortilla is the diminutive of torta, Spanish for cake. In Spain the same word means an omelette, while in Mexico tortillas were being made from maize long before the Spanish arrived.

Which spice is the dried, unopened flower bud of a tropical evergreen tree?

Cloves are the dried flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum, an evergreen tree native to Indonesia's Maluku Islands; the buds are picked while still pink and dry into dark brown nail shapes.

Cocoa pods, which chocolate is made from, sprout straight out of which part of the tree?

The trunk: cacao trees flower straight from the trunk and thick branches, a habit called cauliflory, which makes hand-harvesting easier for pickers using a knife on a long pole.

At most, roughly how many juicy seeds can a single pomegranate hold?

About 1,400: a pomegranate holds anywhere from roughly 200 to 1,400 seeds, each in its own fleshy red coat called an aril. In Greek myth Persephone had to stay in the underworld for eating some.

Black peppercorns are the dried fruit of what kind of plant?

A climbing vine: Piper nigrum climbs trees or poles in hot, wet climates like India's Malabar coast. The fruits are picked green and dried until they wrinkle and turn black; white pepper has the skin removed.

The spice mace is the lacy red covering of which other spice's seed?

Nutmeg: mace is the lacy red aril wrapped around the nutmeg seed, and both come from the same fruit of Myristica fragrans, a tree native to Indonesia's Banda Islands; the mace is peeled off and dried.

In Britain, Pancake Day is Shrove Tuesday, the last day before which season starts?

Lent: pancakes were a tasty way to use up eggs, milk and butter before the 40 days of fasting that begin on Ash Wednesday. Olney in Buckinghamshire has run a pancake race since 1445.

Decorated gingerbread houses became popular after which fairy tale was published?

Hansel and Gretel: after the Brothers Grimm published the tale in 1812, with its witch's house made of bread and cake, German bakers began making little edible houses, and German immigrants carried the Christmas tradition to Pennsylvania.

In 1908, candy maker George Smith named his hard candy on a stick after what?

The horse was called Lolly Pop. Smith trademarked the lollipop name in 1931, though other companies claimed to have invented the treat.

Before going in the oven, ring-shaped bagels are traditionally dunked in what?

A 60- to 90-second boil gives bagels their chewy crust. Montreal bagels are boiled in honey-sweetened water and baked in a wood-fired oven.